Author Kendi shares his insight on racism

Wednesday

Feb 8, 2017 at 6:07 PMFeb 8, 2017 at 6:07 PM

Aida Mallard @AidaMallard

It was standing-room only Sunday at the Alachua County Library Headquarters for a presentation by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, who discussed his award-winning book that chronicles racism from colonial times to the present and made his case that racist ideas are alive and well in America.

Kendi, an assistant professor of history at the University of Florida, discussed “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” winner of the 2016 National Book Award in Nonfiction and a finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award. He read excerpts from the book, fielded questions from the audience and signed copies of his books. He said he began writing "Stamped from the Beginning" soon after the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen killed in 2012 in Sanford.

Kendi, who also authored “The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972,” which was published in 2012, said he is planning to write another book.

Kendi said “Stamped from the Beginning” chronicles a history that teaches the idea that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas and it’s the people with racist ideas who create racist policies. Through his research, Kendi said he found the opposite to be true. He said racist policies have been created typically out of self-interest and are those policies that birth racist ideas as a way to justify racist policies and those racist ideas lead to ignorance and hate.

Kendi said in 1836, John C. Calhoun, a senator from South Carolina, proclaimed slavery was positive for everyone in America and depicted slave owners as benevolent masters and blacks as an inferior race better off cared by whites.

He said an 1840 Census recorded insanity in people and “found” that black people were 10 times more likely to be insane in the free North than the enslaved in the South. Kendi said Calhoun used the Census to justify racist policies.

“They created theory and looked for reasons to justify racism,” said Kendi, adding that his study found that people who produced these racist ideas to normalize racial inequality did it from self-interest, motivated by economics, social or personal reasons.

He said racist ideas still exist about blacks and other ethnic groups, such as Asians, Native Americans, Latinos and Europeans.

But under the skin, Kendi said, we’re all the same.

“No racial group has ever had a monopoly of human genes — now or ever,” Kendi said. “Under the skin, we’re all the same. Racism has made opportunity inferior, not people inferior.”

Kendi said racist theories are based on a subjective stand, mistaken studies or just lies.

He also said the high rate of incarceration of blacks is the result of racist policies and there is a misconception that black neighborhoods are more dangerous than white neighborhoods and that more violent crimes occur in black neighborhoods.

He said the link between violent crime is unemployment, not race.

“A higher level of unemployment equals violent crimes,” said Kendi, adding that neighborhoods with the highest rate of unemployment are the most violent.

The answer to ending violent crime, Kendi said, is to create more jobs.

Kendi spoke about the 13th amendment of 1865, which provided that no one could be enslaved unless as punishment for convicted criminals. Southern states responded by passing laws, known as Black Codes, that criminalized being black, and blacks could be sentenced to forced labor for vagrancy.

“Jails replaced the plantation,” said Kendi. “The convict system proliferated in the South."

And in the U.S. today, Kendi said more people are jailed for drug offenses than violent crimes and voting rights are again under attack.

“People trying to suppress voting rights by suggesting voter fraud,” said Kendi. “Voting restriction is (motivated by) self-interest and justified by voting fraud. It’s strategic. You create this (idea) and people start believing without facts.”

“At the ground level, we should fight against voting restrictions,” Kendi said.